Margaretsville (pop. 212) is a Canadian
rural community in
Annapolis County
Annapolis County is a county in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia located in the western part of the province located on the Bay of Fundy. The county seat is Annapolis Royal.
History
Established August 17, 1759, by Order in Council, Annapoli ...
,
Nova Scotia.
Located on the
Bay of Fundy
The Bay of Fundy (french: Baie de Fundy) is a bay between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a small portion touching the U.S. state of Maine. It is an arm of the Gulf of Maine. Its extremely high tidal range is the hi ...
, Margaretsville was named for Margaret Inglis by her husband the Honourable
Brenton Halliburton, 8th Chief Justice of Nova Scotia. Margaret was the daughter of Bishop Inglis, the first Anglican Bishop of Nova Scotia. When they married her father gave them an estate on the shore which included all the area around where present day Margaretsville sets. This estate sat next to Sir Brenton's father's estate. The Halliburtons had built their summer home in the area in 1802.
Over the years there have been approx. 15 general stores in and around the community of which none now exist. During
World War I, Margaretsville had the distinction of setting a record in Nova Scotia by having over 10% of its population enlist for military service and being second in all of Canada.
In 1946, Margaretsville was honored by having a lady in the community with the longest name in Canada: Mrs. Harriett Belle Franklyn Laura Victoria Adeline Drake Gibson.
In a local newspaper dated May 1901, it was stated that a building was sold, in which Mr. Moody of Margaretsville, built the sailing ship ''Spray'' in which Capt.
Joshua Slocum
Joshua Slocum (February 20, 1844 – on or shortly after November 14, 1909) was the first person to sail single-handedly around the world. He was a Nova Scotian-born, naturalised American seaman and adventurer, and a noted writer. In 1900 he wr ...
made his famous solo voyage around the world.
A busy port during the early 1900s, Margaretsville is now a placid seaside community favored by
tourists,
artist
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...
s and
retirees. There is a small local
art gallery
An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The lon ...
owned by the Artist's Circle (Greenwood, Nova Scotia) which sells a variety of art from many local artists. It is called "The Art Shack" and there is always a member of the Artist's Circle on duty to sell art. There is also lively
folk music scene.
Some locals refer to the community as ‘Margaretville’ (without an ‘s’) and local road signs are/were inconsistent in their spelling of the name. The official spelling
—Margaretsville (and neighboring East Margaretsville) with the ‘s’—was decided by ''Nova Scotia Geographical Names'' on April 5, 1951.
An interesting piece of information concerning Margaretsville is the lighthouse which some say appears on the 1967, ''5
¢Canada'', stamp. As all lighthouses are unique the picture on the stamp matches very closely the Margaretsville lighthouse.
References
External links
*
Communities in Annapolis County, Nova Scotia
{{AnnapolisNS-geo-stub